I was able to complete the process for both Firefox and Thunderbird. I then rebooted in windows and everything was working fine, I had even added some bookmarks and folders while I was in Ubuntu and the changes showed up in xp.
But when I tried to start both programs in Ubuntu, I was told that the programs where already running. I can start them using the default user but not under the new user.
I have gone back to windows, restarted both applications with no problem. I then made certain that both programs where closed, did a complete shutdown and rebooted
in Ubuntu with the same result,i.e. “Firefox/Thunderbird is already running”. And they still both work under the default user.
Do you have any idea why this is happening.
Thanks
Bob
.

When I enter firefox -profilemanager in the terminal, instead of opening up the firefox Choose User Profile Box, it opens the firefox program. How can I get to the profile manager?

Sounds like you already have Firefox open when trying to do that? Try closing all instances of Firefox.

Extensions are shown in ubuntu but are not working

Some extensions may not work. It’s dependent on whether the developer made it so that they work on all platforms.

There are too many things that can go wrong with this scenario.

Frankly, I prefer Google’s Browser Sync Extension.

It continuously synchronizes your Firefox settings – including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords – across your computers. It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions.

That’s true, but that extension has been known to cause heavy memory and performance usage. So I try to stay away from it.

Frankly, I prefer Google’s Browser Sync Extension.

It continuously synchronizes your Firefox settings – including bookmarks, history, persistent cookies, and saved passwords – across your computers. It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions.

If the bookmarks are enough for you, all you need is the Foxmarks extension. I have 2 machines and one uses Feisty and the other dual boots with Gutsy and Simply Mepis. Foxmarks keeps all bookmarks synched.

That is a solution that I highly recommend for users, but that can cause some unneeded overhead for Firefox as well if you’re only using your profile between Windows and Linux on the same computer. Foxmarks has to frequently sync your bookmarks, which can slow down your browsing from time to time. If you’re just on the same computer I would consider sharing your profile.

That’s a good point, but it’s not often that my Windows abnormally shuts down. It’s not a bad idea to keep a separate FAT32 partition though, and you could even just store your Firefox profile on that partition. Then setup Windows and Linux to access the profile on the FAT32 partition following most of the steps outlined above.

I have found it easier to keep a third FAT32 partition on my system. I use the Google Browser sync extension for tabs, passwords, history, and cookies. Then I use the FEBE extension to just back up my extensions to my FAT32 drive. It works ok for me.

Thanks for the great article.

When I tried this trick, it detected everything OK but none of the add-ons worked. When I copied the profile to a folder in the Linux partition and set that as the default, it worked fine.

That’s odd, I had no problems with my add-ons working. It’s especially weird since you just copied the profile and it worked fine, which indicates that it wasn’t a bad extension. Must just be some sort of glitch.